Mohamad Abdalla

Mohamad Abdalla

If we are genuine about finding solutions to violent extremism, then we must move beyond vulgar criticism of Islam and Muslims and work instead with the Australian Muslim community as a key partner in this fight. Constantly blaming Muslims for the crimes of others is counterproductive. And ISIS thrives on this.

Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, New Age Islam

Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, New Age Islam

... the
hardcore Wahhabi belief of al-Wala wal-Bara (that a Muslim cannot be a perfect
Muslim until he/she shows hatred in words and actions against the non-Muslims)
also includes non-Salafi/Wahhabi Muslims such as the Sufis and Shias etc.
Therefore, merely having faith in one Creator is not sufficient for them to be
called Muslim. They have to harbour hatred and enmity against the infidels,
even if they happen to be their friends, classmates, neighbours, countrymen or
even relatives. And yes, harbouring this evil emotion only in heart will not
suffice. They need to convert them all to Islam or else slit their throats,
chop off their heads, kill their wives, their children and destroy their
properties and take them as the spoils of war. Those denying this ‘principle of
faith’ or even entertaining doubts about it were declared by Ibn Abdul Wahhab
as ‘Murtad’ (apostates) and hence were slaughtered.....

Iqbal Latif

But the truth is nobody really knows, and that's the point. Because the Koran is quite clear when it says that you'll be"a new creation in paradise" and that you will be "recreated in a form unknown to you," which seems to me a far more appealing prospect than a virgin. And that number 72 never appears. There are no 72 virgins mentioned in the Koran. That idea only came into being 300 years later,...

Tufail Ahmad, New Age Islam

Tufail Ahmad, New Age Islam

"Two
questions emerge in my mind. We are being told that peaceful conversions to
Islam are fine: for example, the Hindu girl who converted to Islam to marry
Imam Bukhari's son – peacefully. So, the first question is: is peaceful Islam
compatible with the 21st century's ideas of liberty?

"The
second question is: since the Quran and the Hadith are not going to change, is
there a way to introduce changes in the outlook of Indian Muslims?" …

Arshad Alam, New Age Islam

Arif Mohammad Khan

Led by Saudi ideologue, Ali Mian Nadwi, the Muslim Ulema would
eventually argue that since Sharia was divine, no court in the world had the
authority to pass judgment on matters which were matters of faith and belief.
Muslim politicians like Syed Shahabuddin would echo the same argument in
Parliamentary debates. Under such opposition, the government decided to enact a
parliamentary law which would bypass the SC judgment on Muslim maintenance. The
only person who spoke in favour of the act, Arif Mohammad Khan, had to resign
as his position was no longer in consonance with that of the government. ....

Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam

Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam

The writer has
done a fairly good number of articles, posted at New Age Islam over the last
four years that can be used as basis to have fresh insights on a whole range of
Islamic issues - all within the ambit of Islam as preserved in the Qur'an. Each
article is designed to be a work of Ijtihad (fresh insight) and draws on his
duly authenticated joint publication, Essential Message of Islam and there does
not suffer any doctrinal vacuum. As Ghulam Mohiyuddin Sahab has correctly said,
and the Qur'an encourages, he has engaged Aql (intellect), Fiqh (logical
reasoning) and Tadabbur (cognitive faculty) to frame the articles, and has also
delved into the secondary and external sources of knowledge – as knowledge has
no religious boundary and God alone is the fountainhead of all knowledge….

Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam

Muhammad Yunus, New Age Islam

Come this day, the Muslim mind has only ossified in its apathy against the Qur’anic message, while all scholarly attempts over the past two centuries to bring the Qur’anic message to the forefront of Islamic thoughts has been resisted or simply blocked by the clergy to the grievous detriment of the Muslims Umma. Speaking metaphorically, if the Qur’an were the proverbial phoenix that took the early Muslims to great heights, the orthodox Ulema have clipped its wings, chopped off its torso and enrobed the virtually dead body with layers upon layers of theological discourses causing it to stall to the ground plummeting the Muslim Umma down to the lowest depth in their civilisational course – a most ominous predicament reflected in the continued political and intellectual decline of Islam over the recent centuries….

Aamir Hussaini

Is it not surprising that Victor Mallet adopted the same way which we have seen in writings of our some liberal and moderate journalists and analysts like Najam sethi , Raza Rumi , Hamid Mir , Talat Hussain and others who not only called Tahir Ashrafi a liberal face of Deobandism but they played a significant role in promoting him in mainstream media as great liberal , moderate and peace promoting scholar despite his bigotry against Shia , Ahmadis , Christians , his support for Osama bin Laden , Mullah Omar , Al-Qaeda , Tehreek Taliban Afghanistan .....

Tufail Ahmad, New Age Islam

Tufail Ahmad, New Age Islam

Throughout the
course of history, social change has essentially come through external sources:
from interaction with foreign ideas occurring through wars, technologies and
globalisation. It is not surprising that there are no liberal Muslim writers
and reformers in India. This is because if a true liberal Muslim writer arose,
secularism will shun him. Secularism's purpose is served not by liberal Muslim
writers but by Islamists. The cause of Muslim reform in India is currently
limited to interpreting Islamic texts, whether it be the case of late Marxist
writer Asghar Ali Engineer, or social activist Shaista Amber. The secular Hindu
will not welcome any Muslim who dared to question basic ideas of Islam.....

Irshad Manji

We learn the
difference between Islam and Islamism, as well as the fascinating distinctions
among political Islamists, revolutionary Islamists and militant Islamists.
Crucially, we discover how Mr Nawaz himself fell in with an Islamist
organisation. He speaks of his "identity crisis," brought on by
British racism and pounced on by charismatic recruiters trolling for vulnerable
youth. Grievance born of secular sins - discrimination by the liberal
democratic state - preceded his Islamist ideology, not the other way around……

Hanna Yusuf

Hanna Yusuf

Another day, another myth about Muslims. The most recent one to set tongues wagging is that poppies offend Muslims. According to far-right groups like Britain First, Muslims hate poppies. Their claim comes after a few individuals, who are widely condemned in the Muslim community, criticised the poppy on the basis that it constitutes an endorsement of wars in the Middle East.

Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam

Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam

The great attraction of
reformist movements has been the call to go back to the pristine Islam of the
Prophet’s times and eschewing all Bid’at or innovation that has crept into the
Religion of Islam. To my mind, the greatest Bid’at is the corruption in the
meaning of Shuhuda to mean martyr followed by legitimizing suicide bombing
through the use of the euphemism ‘martyrdom operations’ or ‘Amaliyat
Istishhadiyaa’. While fighting in the cause of Allah (Qital Fi Sabilillah) is a
command to fight oppression, there is no concept of “Martyrdom Operations”. A
Muslim is asked to strive in the cause of Allah through peaceful means or
through fighting against oppression in a just war but he is not asked to fight
seeking martyrdom or to undertake martyrdom operations! Seeking martyrdom is a
major Bid’at and a recent Shi’ite innovation achieved by reinterpreting the
political killing of Hazrat Hussain (RA) as a deliberate act....

Victor Mallet

Akhtarul Wasey

Akhtarul Wasey, an expert on the history of Islamic education, says pre-Deoband madrassas had a broader curriculum including the science and literature of the time, and produced doctors and engineers as well as clerics. The first education minister of independent India, he recalls, was Abul Kalam Azad, an Islamic scholar who emphasised the importance of basic education for all, including girls. But in modern, Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Bangladesh, Wasey complains, “majoritarian arrogance” has led to narrow and exclusivist interpretations of the Koran. Liberal Asian Muslims argue that the problem is not so much one of madrassas training terrorists, but rather of the growth of intolerance in society at large, and the consequent proliferation of bigoted religious schools. “People get rich and the first thing they do is build a madrassa in their village, because they think it’s a pious action.....